Hyperesthesia

HYPERESTESIA, HYPERESTESIA (from Greek hyper - excessively and hypo - below and aisthesia - sensation, feeling). Hyperesthesia is increased sensitivity, usually spreading to all types of cutaneous sensitivity. Tactile irritations are often perceived not as such, but accompanied by severe pain; this is the so-called painful anesthesia - anaesthesia dolorosa, which develops due to increased pain sensitivity in the absence of tactile sensitivity. This phenomenon occurs in neuritis, radiculitis, in spinal tumors, and sometimes in spinal sclerosis. Hyperesthesia with respect to pain irritations, when they are insignificant in intensity but accompanied by increased pain sensations, is called hyperalgesia. If thermal irritations cause pain sensations disproportionate to the height of the temperature, then one speaks of thermal hyperesthesia. In a number of organic diseases, hyperesthesia is a common symptom; it is a common companion of meningitis and thalamic syndromes (see), and in the latter case it is more often unilateral. In myelitis without damage to the meninges, a band of hyperesthesia usually occurs above the border of anesthesia, covering one or two segments. Hyperesthesia is also found in exceptional cases in the initial stages of poliomyelitis. In spinal sclerosis, passing or constant hyperesthesia is sometimes encountered, and it usually has a root type and is localized most often in the middle thoracic roots, less often in the roots of the upper and lower limbs. In subacute and chronic meningitis, and especially in radiculitis, hyperesthesia is frequently encountered. With irritation of nerve trunks, their compression, and in neuritis, especially in the initial stages, in various intoxications, in particular alcoholic, in infections - tetanus, rabies, etc. - hyperesthesia is observed very often. In traumatic and other neuroses, and especially in hysteria, hyperesthesia is one of the frequent symptoms. Hysterical zones (ovaries, etc.) are nothing other than zones of hyperesthesia. Hyperesthesia may also affect the organs of sense: increased olfaction - hyperosmia, sharpened taste - hypergeusia, sharpened hearing - hyperacusia; increased sensitivity to light irritations is also encountered, often in infectious diseases (measles, encephalitis, meningitis, typhus, etc.). Hyperesthesia can also occur in diseases of various organs, both in them themselves and on the surface of the skin. Head established that diseases of internal organs: heart, lungs, liver, stomach, etc., cause hyperesthesia, primarily of thermal and pain sensitivity in certain areas of the skin, depending on the damage to that or other organ, so-called Head's zones. Generalized emotional hyperesthesia occurs in neuroses, especially in hysteria. Hypoesthesia is not a complete absence of sensitivity, but only its decrease - it may also affect all types of sensitivity, both superficial and deep. It occurs both in organic and in functional diseases. Its intensity, localization, and spread change depending on the pathological process (see Anesthesia).

A. Kozhevnikov. Moral hyperesthesia, increased moral scrupulosity, in pathological cases increasing to constant doubts about the correctness and propriety of one's actions. This feature, characteristic of some psychasthenics with a constitution of obsessional states, must be distinguished from the morbid tendency to self-accusation of depressive patients and the resonating of schizophrenics. - Religious hyperesthesia, a morbidly developed religious feeling, characteristic of self-absorbed dreamy personalities of a hysterical cast and sometimes reaching twilight ecstatic states and stigmatization (see Stigmata). In all such cases, it seems there is a mixture of erotic components. - Sexual hyperesthesia, increased sexual excitability. Being in some cases the result of excessive tension of sexual drive, based on hyperfunction of the sexual glands, it nevertheless more often represents a manifestation of irritability weakness of the psychosexual apparatus and as such occupies no last place in the symptomatology of some nervous and mental diseases: sexual neurasthenia, hysteria, schizophrenia, climacteric states, etc. A somewhat special position is occupied by the erotism of manic patients, in whom, besides increased sexual excitability, there is certainly also a weakening of inhibitions on the way to the manifestation of normal sexual drive. Hyperesthetics, according to Kretschmer, are a variety of schizothymic temperament, characterized by excessive sensitivity to external irritations, associated on one hand with increased vulnerability and irritability, and on the other - with great mental sensitivity; these are either unadapted to practical life idealists or mimosa-like personalities who withdraw from crude reality into the world of hidden intimate experiences.

□ Zinoviev.